Policy Hub
On 8 December 2008, the Global Climate Network published a report which finds that current proposals from the United States and the European Union for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 relative to 1990 levels would result in industrialised countries reducing emissions by between 10 and 25% if replicated across this group as a whole. However, even at the top end of this range, a significant 2020 ‘mitigation gap’ is likely to open up against the reductions necessary to stay on track for a halving of global emissions by 2050.
The report argues that developing countries are unlikely to accept the substantial costs associated with closing the resulting mitigation gap while their levels of wealth and per capita usage of energy are still comparatively low.
It suggests that ongoing climate change negotiations need to go beyond the setting of targets and increasingly focus on enabling actual reductions which are only possible through new technology, with new finance and by equitably sharing the global costs. Without such a focus, the report contends that the resulting mitigation gap could undermine the credibility of a post-2012 regime that has the aim of avoiding dangerous climate change.